The 1980's New York Mets were hated in St. Louis, as they were despised elsewhere in Major League Baseball. They were a great team with outrageous characters, making enemies everywhere they went.
Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Co. reveled in their bad guy image. But in the Mets’ midst was a good guy seemingly out of place in that rowdy clubhouse: the ever-smiling Gary Carter.
He was not pond scum. He was too virtuous for that, to the chagrin of some teammates.
Carter's passing from brain tumors Thursday prompted tributes from sports pundits across the land:
Tom Verducci, SI.com: “There was, despite resentment from inside his clubhouses, nothing phony about Carter, and nothing given easily to him. He was the same off camera as on: optimistic, faithful, kind-hearted, philanthropic. It drove some people nuts that Carter played every day with the joy as if it were the opening day of Little League. Even that nickname, ‘Kid,’ was minted with some derisiveness by jaded Expos veterans when Carter, in his first spring training camp, in 1973, had the nerve to run hard on every sprint and bring enthusiasm to every drill.”
Ian O’Connor, ESPN.com: “Too often professional athletes wear forbidding masks while playing their games, and all but hang ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs around their necks. They'd rather store their true thoughts and emotions inside a hermetically sealed chamber, and never let you in for a peek. Carter? Whenever he put on a big league uniform for the Montreal Expos, New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers, he wanted to assure every man, woman and child watching that he was the luckiest soul in the park. If he could've sky-written his happiness across a blue, day-game sky, Carter surely would have done it.”
Tracy Ringolsby, FoxSports.com: “Want to know what kind of a guy Gary Carter was? Biggest knock on him was that he was such a good guy that he couldn’t be for real. ‘I try to emphasize what’s good in life,’ Carter once said. ‘The Lord, playing ball, my family, meeting people and good health.’ And he meant it. He lived as good, if not better, a life than he talked. Gary Carter was there for whatever fans, media and teammates needed, whenever they needed it. He wasn’t looking for anything in return. It was the only way he knew to act.”
Tim Brown, CBSSports: “While he rightfully went into the Hall of Fame as a Montreal Expo, for years being the face of that franchise, he was perhaps as accurately the soul of the best of the Mets. At the very least he was their conscience, loose as it may have been. You remember them – a little too sure of themselves, a little too earnest, a little too happy to win. A little too good. That was Gary Carter.”
George Vecsey, New York Times: “For a man who had nothing bad to say or do toward anybody, he was strangely alone in the Mets’ clubhouse. In Montreal he had been the core of the Expos, but General Manager Frank Cashen and his Mets staff had accumulated so many strong personalities on the Mets that Carter was muted. When a pitcher needed a lecture, it usually came from Keith Hernandez, making a fist from first base: Settle down or I’ll kill you. When a fight was needed, Ray Knight would oblige, willingly. Straw and Doc, Nails and Wally, Roger and Bobby O. In New York, Kid Carter was pure vanilla for a city with stronger tastes.”
Mike Lupica, New York Daily News: “Gary Carter helped make the Mets champions as much as Hernandez did. In a clubhouse full of bad boys and bad behavior and bad habits, he was such a good man. And as great as he was with the Montreal Expos, he will always be a Met out of October of 1986 . . . when there were two outs in the bottom of the 10th in Game 6 of the World Series, two outs and nobody on, when the team that had won 108 games in the regular season and then won that wonderful NLCS against the Astros was that close to going home, Kid was the first to absolutely refuse to make the last out of the World Series. He singled, Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight singled. Finally Mookie, with that slow roller down the first base line, like the whole season rolled right through Bill Buckner’s legs in that moment.”
Scott Miller, CBSSports.com: “It's hard to see Hall of Famers grow old because when we see the pictures, they don't square with what we continue to see in our ever-youthful minds. Willie Mays forever will be running down Vic Wertz's long drive in 1954. Stan Musial always will be coiled in that funky batting stance with the Redbirds proudly on his chest. Though it eventually happens to all of us, it can be damned unsettling to see these guys as old men, wobbling as they walk -- probably because the same thing is happening to us even if we can't see it. But Gary Carter? At 57? He had so much life to live, so many more smiles to give.”
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder while wondering how all those major college coaches overlooked Jeremy Lin?
Will the Knicks find a way to mess up Linsanity?
Given all the terrible guard play that team has suffered, can you blame Knicks fans for celebrating the Linsanity?
And can we accept that Linsanity will sweep the nation?
If Sarah Palin is on the bandwagon, then Lin has to be special, right?
On the other hand, can we ease off the Lin puns?
MEGAPHONE
“I think it would be great, it would be fun to play in front of these fans again. I had a lot of fun times here. You can't predict the future. Hopefully you continue to stay healthy. I'm here as a Miami player and I'm happy where I am now but I don't rule that out in any sense. If I decide to come back, hopefully the fans will accept me.”
Heat star LeBron James, threatening to return to Cleveland to finish his NBA career.
